The present invention generally relates to a technique for providing an interactive graphical user interface (GUI) element in a mobile device, and more particularly, to a technique for converting data received in a data message into an interactive GUI element.
With the advent of the mobile environment, communication service providers are interested in increasing their revenue by offering, for example, interactive services to subscribers. Given that mobile devices have limited computing resources, however, such services must be provided in a way that fits within the computing constraints of a mobile device. Text messaging such as that known in the industry as Short Message Service (SMS) is a popular non-voice means of communicating in the mobile environment, however, it only has text, and may be considered as the mobile version of e-mail. Similar to e-mail, SMS does not lend itself to communicating interactive content.
Moreover, some simple interactive applications are facilitated by a GUI which provides easy access and easy interaction. An example of such an application may be, for example, an opinion poll. An opinion poll usually requires users to select their choice(s) and then click an OK button or equivalent to send the user's selections back to the content provider. A simple GUI for better interaction between the users and content providers would therefore be desirable in mobile devices.
A paper published in IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, V50, n2, May, 2004, P535-542, titled “Defining Services for Mobile Terminals Using Remote User Interfaces” (Author: Verhoeven, Richard, Dees, Walter), discloses a Remote User Interface (RUI) protocol. With the RUI protocol, the client application first receives a description of an initial user interface, called a UI fragment, to generate an initial interface. Subsequently, when the presented UI needs to be updated or changed, instead of sending a complete interface, only the required changes to the existing interface are sent in the form of a partial interface description, also called a UI fragment, (e.g. XML-based user interface descriptions). These subsequently received UI fragments are then used to adjust the existing interface so as to achieve better performance and better inter-operability. However, the interface provision scheme disclosed in the paper requires complicated descriptions, such as XML-based user interface descriptions, which may be overly complicated for simple interactive applications.
Today, an electronic form document is often used as a technique for providing interaction services. Currently, electronic form documents are typically rendered using a browser and Java Script technology. However, Java Script code is too large to be used in most mobile devices. JavaME, which specifies a mobile-based alternative to Java Script, is a popular platform on mobile devices. Therefore, there is an opportunity to provide a communication service that allows simple interaction by leveraging JavaME and SMS to provide electronic form document technology on such devices, and other device with limited resources.